


Echoes

by sweetvillain



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drug Addiction, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-08
Updated: 2011-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 12:16:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetvillain/pseuds/sweetvillain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About the brothers Holmes and the breaking and mending of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

Their father dies just weeks before his fiftieth birthday. Mummy is out of the country when it happens, leaving Mycroft alone to deal with his nine-year old brother's quiet but inconsolable tears.

Sherlock is half curled in his lap on the sofa and Mycroft doesn't expect him to speak at all that day, but he does. "I think you should have it", Sherlock says, his breath still hitching. He's not looking up but his small hand points unerringly at a square wooden box on the mantelpiece. Mycroft's throat constricts because he knows what it is - the silver pocket watch Sherlock picked as a gift for their father's birthday, with mummy's help.

He doesn't know it yet (although in hindsight, it seems obvious), but this is the last time he'll see Sherlock cry, the last time his brother will ever allow himself to be comforted like this.

Sherlock doesn't cry at the funeral. Neither does Mycroft, but his hand stays tightly clutched around the watch in his pocket.

 

Mycroft only ever once loses his temper completely in front of his brother. Sherlock has left rehab after mere days, and when Mycroft tracks him down in some disused hovel by the docks Sherlock doesn't even deign to talk to him, simply smirks in the most godawful way.

"Don't you dare", Mycroft growls, but Sherlock lets the needle sink in, all the while staring at his brother like he's some kind of despicable insect.

That's when Mycroft loses it, and he hasn't even realised he's been holding on to the watch in his pocket until his hand flies out, ripping the silver chain and then the shattering noise is silvery also, almost melodious as the watch hits the floor and tiny gem-like parts come tumbling out into every corner of the room.

The noise seems to echo much too long in the following silence and Sherlock's not sneering now, his eyes wide and showing that he's every bit as shocked as Mycroft is. Suddenly it's impossible to breathe in that dank encroaching space, and Mycroft flees, like he's never fled from anything before.

The next day Sherlock is gone but the pieces of the silver pocket watch have been meticulously collected into a small heap on the table.

Mycroft wraps them in a handkerchief and when he gets home, he deposits them in the square wooden box. He keeps it in his bedside drawer and never has the watch repaired, not even after things get better with Sherlock. Some things you can't take back.

 

Many busy decades later an assassin's bullet finally gets Mycroft, at the Diogenes Club of all places.

He'll never know that Sherlock reluctantly agrees to go through his personal effects, or witness the punch to the gut his brother feels when he sees the wooden box in the bedside drawer.

In the following weeks Sherlock studies the watch and its mechanism and carefully puts the tiny wheels and cogs back together. He doesn't talk about it, not even to John.

He never cries, but sometimes he finds his hand has wound up tightly clutched around the watch in his pocket. He feels it tick as it metes out silver seconds, almost melodious.


End file.
